American cities have begun to wage war against graffiti artists using the latest consumer tech: namely, integrated digital photography and GPS platforms feeding into a central database run as an online service.
Graffiti Tracker, the company behind this initiative (motto: "every wall tells a story"), says on its website that …

COMMENTS

Where is PC Plod?

Pointless, expensive boondoggle. This is almost as fucking stupid as putting microchips in peoples bins to stop them throwing away too much rubbish. It addresses the problem after the fact. Employing more people (i.e. policemen) to go around saying 'Hey You! Stop that!' would be more effective.

Taggers

A tagger was recently caught in our neighborhood. 16. His punishment? 6 months probated for two years, a $1000 fine and he had to clean all his work, a total of around 150 pieces.

The fool posted his work on his website, with addresses.

And now school's out. We are expecting our picnic tables to be dragged off into the woods (where teens will smoke a little weed and drink Keystone Light), our pool to have various things thrown into it (furniture, rocks, the occasional turd) and more tagging.

Most of these kids aren't "poor unfortunates" but rather upper middle class who do it because it's kewl and gives them status points. And they get more points for getting busted.

US prisons

"in the States the authorities are more willing to hand out bird"

Yes they are, because prisons are run by private organizations who then profit from cheap labor that they can sell. Add to that the pretext of "social reintegration" and you have the perfect business plan - except that you need a ready supply of free arms to put to work.